Statcounter vs Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a tool for digital marketing experts who have the time and patience to invest in extensive training. The official ‘Google Analytics for Beginners’ course comes in seventeen parts. And that’s just a warm up for their 'Advanced Google Analytics' and 'Google Analytics for Power Users' courses.

The steep learning curve and heavy use of analytics terminology is a sticking point for many, not to mention the multiple levels of navigation menus and endless array of charts in the Google Analytics interface.

We designed Statcounter for small businesses who don’t have a digital marketing expert on their team. With easy to understand terminology, a simple user interface and all the features you need to understand your visitors, increase your traffic and make the most out of your website and digital marketing activities, Statcounter is the path of least resistance.

Google Analytics

Steep learning curve

Requires a training course

Geared towards expert digital marketers

Statcounter

Easy to use out-of-the-box

Made for businesses without a digital marketing expert on their team

Bots and spam removed from stats

Statcounter gives you the detailed visitor view. Really detailed.

Both Statcounter and Google Analytics present data in aggregate form where groups of observations are represented with summary statistics. E.g. total page views, breakdown of mobile and desktop, average visit lengths, bounce rate, etc.

However, only Statcounter gives you the ability to drill down to a detailed view of each individual visitor for full visibility of your visitor's experience.

Statcounter's Recent Activity feeds show you a real-time, live feed of your visitors to see their location and system stats, and understand their behaviour and engagement.

Visitor Paths helps you make informed decisions about design and content by examining the navigation paths your visitors take through your website.

Magnify any visitor to view a forensic level of detail and identify anonymous web traffic as leads and customers.

Google Analytics

Aggregate data only

Statcounter

Aggregate data, plus...

Detailed views of individual visitors

Navigation paths visitors took through your website

Paying for Google Ads? You need to know about click fraud.

Click fraud is a major problem for any business paying for clicks to their website. It occurs when individuals or automated computers (bots) click on an advert without having any interest in the product/service advertised. Click Fraud is performed, instead, simply to generate a cost for the advertiser (without any chance of making a sale) and consume the advertiser's budget.

In 2017, 25% of all ad clicks were estimated to be fraudulent. Think of that in terms of a quarter of your digital advertising spend going down the toilet! And with the emergence of automated bots and click farms, the problem is getting exponentially worse.

With 84.5% of their revenue coming from ads and a quarterly revenue of $36.3 billion, (source) there's no doubt that Google is primarily an advertising business and their goal is to sell ads. Therefore it is not in Google's interest to help you spend less on ads and the tools they provide are ill equipped to detect the problem.

As an independently run business, Statcounter has no ulterior motive and gives you an impartial view on your website traffic. Our easy to use website analytics tools help you quickly identify and label suspicious visitor activity and download reports in spreadsheet format to submit to Google for a refund.

Google Analytics

Google benefits financially from click fraud

Does not provide adequate tools to help

Statcounter

Independent & impartial

Provides the tools you need to detect click fraud and get refunded

Support when you need it.

Google Analytics support appears to have a live chat feature for support but when you engage with the bot, you quickly realise it is only interested in helping if you are paying for ads. Not looking to advertise?

"Kindly fill out the form below and someone should get back to you within 2 - 3 days."-Google Analytics Live Chat

Statcounter provides email support for all free accounts and priority live chat support with real humans for all upgraded members. Talk to one of our experienced analytics experts whenever you have a question or issue. Ask us how something works, suggest a feature, report a bug. Our friendly in house support team is here to help.

Google Analytics

No live chat support

Several days wait for support

Statcounter

Live Chat Support for upgraded members

Email support for free accounts

What are our customers are saying?

"I know that I can get some of this information from Google Analytics but I feel like Google Analytics is not very user-friendly. It's more difficult for me to read the reports, and they don't have the same kind of detail that Statcounter does. So while I have Google Analytics set up and I have Jetpack set up so I can quickly look at daily stats, Statcounter is filling in all the gaps for me."

"Statcounter is basically the pulse of our business. It's always the first tab on my browser and I refresh it probably 40 to 50 times a day. It has always been my go-to. Google analytics has a lot of noise. It's powerful, but Statcounter makes it so much easier to make quick decisions."

"I find the Google Analytics interface horrific. And Statcounter is just dead easy and dead clear and dead simple to use. Most of my clients aren't particularly technically savvy but they can understand Statcounter so easily. They just get it. I know if I gave them a login for Google Analytics, I'd spend hours on the phone every week explaining stuff to them."

"One of the main reasons I choose Statcounter over of Google Analytics is because it’s so user friendly. It has a really nice interface with clear reports. The screens are easy to understand and accessible. And it’s the same with my clients. They really appreciate the simplicity."

"I have Google Analytics on my site but I never ever check it because I don't feel like they give you the information in an easily digestible format. Whereas with Statcounter, it's easier for me to see what's going on with my site."

"We don’t use Google Analytics. Instead, we use Statcounter because it gives us usable and actionable data. Google Analytics is a confusing mess as a tool. I’m sure it works well in the board meetings though! Other than that, it is useless."